We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day I should have though feminists have more to worry about this film than everyone else. The point of Golding’s book is that, freed from societal restraints, the boys descend into savagery.
If gender is a social construct then, freed from societal restraints, girls should also descend into savagery because the only difference between boys and girls is how society shapes their behaviour.
But this contradicts feminst doublethink that tells if that although gender is a social construct, girls are actually more caring and empathetic, even without social conditioning.
If the film follows the plot of the book then it isn’t going to show a feminist utopia; it’s going to be more like Heathers or Mean Girls.
– ‘Shatterface’
This is an interesting comment by ‘Shatterface‘ on a Spiked article about an all-female remake of Lord of the Flies.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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There are no differences unless they need a difference and then the difference is profound until it’s no longer needed and then there are no differences.
Maybe after the crash they will together build a caring, equal island Utopia.
Unless a man survives, of course.
Correct bobby b.
It makes no sense to try and treat this Frankfurt School of Marxism “Political Correctness” or “Critical Theory” stuff as a coherent world-view (it contradicts itself at every turn), it is a WEAPON – nothing more. A weapon to be used against “capitalist society”.
But it is a weapon that now dominates the education system (the schools and the universities) and the media (especially the entertainment media), and it is being pushed by many large business enterprises (because their senior staff are educated in it).
The West is being destroyed by this weapon – which has succeeded beyond the dreams of the (long dead) Frankfurt School if Marxism inventors of the weapon.
I seem to remember there was the “Expeditie Robinson” (essentially Dutch desert island survivor reality TV) show a few years back did something along these lines, splitting the teams into a female team on one island and a male team on another island.
Rather than the feminist ideal of the females creating some Amazonian utopia, it descended into farce with the males establishing a shelter, hunting, cooking, etc. within a matter of days and the female team sunbathing and nearly starving.
In short, the feminist ideal of an all female society being an Amazonian utopia is bullshit. So just as in the two other film versions of Lord of the Flies I expect to see the female Piggy getting a rock in the face, William Golding’s views on women notwithstanding.
I’ve long estimated Feminism as not being a philosophy at all, but rather as being an alliance of multiple different philosophies that contradict eachother on many points, but never on “Women should get more goodies”.
They may contradict eachother on what “goodies” are, they may contradict eachother on what sort of “should” is relevant, they may even contradict eachother on what “women” are lately, but they all agree to that assertion.
So is what you see (or hear others seeing) on “reality” shows.
That said, feminism is unadulterated cancer.
Agreed and films even more so, but the fact that the producers had to intervene to stop the females looking so pathetic is telling.
“I should have though feminists have more to worry about this film than everyone else.”
Of course; that’s obvious. And it’s why they are so upset about the film: not because it will depict a “male” viewpoint of women’s social constructs (it’s written by two men, after all), but because it will disclose the inherent illogic of “feminist” dogma.
Interesting quote, John Galt. What is the source?
YouTube
Reality Tv probably picked the most feckless, arrogant, entitled and stupid women their psychologists could find. Because that makes for better cringe-inducing TV.
But John Galt’s statements are “broadly” correct.
You’re going to hell, you know. 😆
– – –
To be fair, the condemnation ought not be aimed at “feminism” in general. Its roots go back to the suffrage movement, which was a valid and necessary movement, as were its offshoots that sought, not to bring on a different hierarchy with women on top, but to allow societal power to everyone equally without regard to gender.
Any good movement can be subverted to bad causes. Third-wave intersectional feminism has subverted what was originally a good cause.
I beg to differ, at least for the most part.
There is no such thing as societal power – society is about voluntary interactions, power is something else entirely. And the numerous improvements in the lives of Western women usually attributed to feminism (including women’s suffrage) have nothing to do with either, and have everything to do with science, technology, and other outcomes of free markets.
Also, what Mr. Ecks said.
The problem with the granting of female suffrage was that it allowed politicians to split the household by campaigning directly to women for things which were against her husband’s own interests.
Are you arguing against the basic point that a democracy ought not consist of some preselected portion of the people, but instead of all adult citizens? Or are you saying something more nuanced about how they accomplished their goal? If you truly are claiming that women ought not be allowed the vote, I guess I’d be surprised.
There certainly is such a thing as societal power. If the non-red-haired people decide that red-haired people cannot vote for government, and then choose a government without the consent or participation of those red-haired people, then that society – through the actions of the empowered non-red-haired – has exercised power over the red-haired. Where is the voluntary acquiescence of the red-haired in such a situation?
That was certainly a problem for the husbands’ interests, but if the wives’ interests didn’t completely intersect with the husbands’ interests, how is it right to simply ignore the wives’ interests?
“The problem with ending slavery in the southern USA was that it deprived white people of property they had paid for.” We recognize that this statement fails because it ignores another set of interests. How does this differ from what you said?
Because what had previously been the interests of a household/family were divided, this was exacerbated for their own gain by the left who knew full well that the disintegration of the nuclear family was the road to power.
That’s a complete strawman argument. It doesn’t work because only a delusional feminist idiot would equate marriage with slavery. Marriage remains a purely voluntary engagement.
That’s one of the most egregious misreadings I’ve seen in a while, and all the more surprising that it came from someone who is generally reasonable. My point was contained within this sentence: “We recognize that this statement fails because it ignores another set of interests.”
If only the husbands could vote before, and granting the wives a vote changed the results, doesn’t that indicate that “the interests of a household” weren’t being accurately conveyed?
Feminists have no need to worry about this film at all.
If they like it and other people don’t or point out that it contradicts fashionable theories of gender then they will simply scream ‘sexist’.
PC obsessed people don’t do debate or discussion.
They simply shout down dissent with ridiculous accusations.
Very good.
There will be a ‘capable one,’ a ‘sexy one,’ a ‘clever one,’ and a ‘tough one’ and they will have a conflict and then pull together against some second-act threat. Because it’s a movie.
Bobby, your reply regarding ‘societal power’ seems to conflate society with state/government. I think that if you note this distinction, my meaning may become more clear.
What ever I am arguing, it certainly is not from the basic premise that democracy is wonderful: you may recall a recent discussion here on Perry M’s post quoting Churchill etc. – so my point should be taken within that context. FWIW, I had not and still do not have a clear position re that discussion , but be that as it may, my understanding is that historically in the UK voting rights were restricted to land owners (because that’s who paid taxes). Women being unable to vote was not a direct consequence of being female, but an indirect one of inheritance laws that effectively left most of them unable to legally own land. IMO that was clearly unfair and needlessly discriminatory (not to mention infringing on the property rights of men, fathers and husbands, who did want to pass their property to their wives and daughters), and needed to be corrected – which it was, but only after the suffragettes achieved their goal, IIRC. In the US early on women did have the vote in some states, while not in others (I don’t remember if that was connected to property ownership and tax payment, but IMO it doesn’t matter all that much, as that could be seen as just another issue left to the individual states). In any case, by framing the issue of voting in terms of gender, instead of applying these terms where they properly belonged – i.e. property ownership, the early feminists laid the ground for so many other issued being framed in the same terms, just as improperly. The third-wave feminism is not an aberration, but a natural consequence of that early mistake (assuming it was just a mistake).
For normal political movements that would be true. But modern feminism is more of a social movement and it’s Marxist in the sense that you can’t be a good feminist without being able to ignore obvious contradictions. So this is nothing new for them.
My question is, will they still have a fat character named ‘Piggy’ ?
I’m guessing … not.
There will be no more characters, only group identities.
No. She’ll be called “Healthy at every size”. Maybe they’ll go for a different aesthetic and she’ll be an anorexic that is ironically called Piggy 😆
Or they’ll add a twenty minute subplot about how, even in a Hobbesian world there’s “no room for fat shaming”.
An interesting story, but I have to think the problem may have been with those particular women rather than ‘woman’ in general; at least, I can’t imagine my wife settling for feckless hedonism in a survival situation. She’s easygoing in everyday life, but I’ve seen her when the chips are down, and Wonder Woman pops out.
How about other Samizdatists imagining women they know in those circumstances, and reporting back?
Lord Of The Flies…with girls?
Complete with “new and improved” scripts?
Anybody happen to notice the “stranded children” (m&f) developing a society, in a desert, in Thunder Dome?
It’s only a movie.It’s only a movie.It’s only a movie.
Isn’t that what the Google Memorandum was about? How in the absence of knowledge of an individual we augment ourselves with generalised information in the form of stereotypes until we know them better.
Clearly the stereotype of females sunbathing and bitching at each other is not THAT unbelievable. Equally, you don’t volunteer to be a game show if you are a shrinking violet.
Capt, in Thunder Dome, there had been some adults to set things up, but they wandered off, looking for other survivors, and left the kids on there own. The kids wondered if Max was the Captain come back to lead them ‘home’.
“If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” – Camille Paglia
John Galt.
What you describe is real “democratic socialism” and of the “local community”.
The Frankfurt School of Marxism were not uncritical fans of the Soviet Union (that is a mistake made about them) – they held that it was not really “democratic” and that it was “too centralised”.
A group of people (men or women – or both) sitting and discussing things till a consensus had been reached, and organising economic life on this basis – was what the Frankfurt School of Marxism (the creators of MODERN feminism) wanted.
It does not work – it just does not work.
But much of modern culture and the most of the education system (including so called “Critical Theory” which is blindly uncritical of socialist assumptions) assume that it works, that it must work.
By the way – the modern Nazis points out how supportive some of the Frankfurt School of Marxism were of Israel. They leave out that it was the kibbutz (and other) system of communal living that the Frankfurt School of Marxism – and that this was always a tiny minority of Israeli Jews and such communities have been in decline (yes decline) for 40 years.
Alisa,
Your understanding of English democratic history is slightly wrong – whilst the franchise originally varied across boroughs depending on a variety of factors (so some boroughs could have one voter (very rarely) whilst another borough of the same size may have had all the propertied men as voters), the one universal was that the franchise was limited to landholding men. Women could and often did hold property (note the number of late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century writers and their heroines who held property independently (renting or owning both counted)), but could not vote.
As to the household interest thing that John Galt brings up, how is the interest of a household superior to the interests of the individual members? It seems a retrograde fantasy to imagine that the household was a unit for social stability (especially as they allowed the normalisation of violence and subjegation to arbitrary authority), considering that socities that still rely on households (you know, the Muslim ones that many commentators here like to moan about for example) are generally opposed to the sort of values of freedom and liberty to which we all seem to roughly adhere. Plus if I wanted to control a society, I would prefer the number of politically-involved individuals to be as small as possible, something that all statists seem to understand as well with their desire to eliminate groups from discussions on arbitrary grounds – it would be so much easier for them if there were less people to eliminate.
An amusing quote, Shlomo. Thanks.
Could you point to a specific example, Watchman?
If my ex-wife had been on that island, they’d have had condos, a functioning power plant, lots of nervous facial tics, and no sex unless the garage had been painted.
1. If pre-adolescent and adolescent girls were placed into the ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario (remember, it’s a book about young boys) then the result would be mayhem, chaos, anarchy, privation, violence, starvation and death – just in a different form than it played out for the boys.
2. If a film is made along the lines described, it will inevitably be a preachy SJW polemic which promotes the supposed superiorities of girls and women at every turn, and it will therefore be a boring and unpopular failure – just like the ‘Ghostbusters’ remake. Bein-pensants will blame this on misogyny, hatred and bigotry, thus once again condemning untold millions for staying away from a bad film.
3. As Professor Althouse has pithily described, many times, modern social-justice thinking holds that there is absolutely no difference whatever between men and women, all gender roles and identities are entirely socially-constructed, and any differences between the genders are always and inevitably the result of sexism, prejudice, bigotry and hatred on the part of men – except when there is a difference in favor of women, or which shows women in a better light, in which case, it is entirely the result of the innate superiority of women, jointly and severally. In addition, and in general, all women are always intrinsically smarter, harder-working, more intelligent and more empathetic than all men, and a world run by women would be immeasurably superior in any and every way to what we have today. I trust this is clear.
llater,
llamas
Amazing how it was so until less than a century ago.
Being the populace universally educated by the state, the greater the number of electors the easier to achieve the desired outcome by said state (Condorcet’ jury theorem). And it keeps the populace entertained with the illusion of power, which is to say, docile. No downside for the democratic government with the extension of the franchise. Next step: reduction of the legal age to cast a vote.
A feminist man is an ignoramus. A feminist woman is a liar. I’m being charitable here, of course. 🙂
I’ve seen all female teams descend into complete dysfunctionality, animosity and an extreme sense of entitlement. With the women openly saying the next hire should be male. I’ve also seen quietly competent all male teams being considered a problem requiring diversification. With the assumption being that they are storing up all sorts of risks through groupthink.
So, in your view, if one believes that there are differences in predilections and physiological capabilities between men and women, but that gender should not be a factor in democratic enfranchisement, is he a feminist?
Without societal constraints, my expectation is that a society of girls would descend into savagery, exactly like a society of boys. Except on those (rare) occasions when it wouldn’t. I have no idea what any of this would prove with respect to feminism,. Nor do I especially care.
First of all, democratic enfranchisement is a misbegotten novelty designed to fool the populace. When restricted to men, it could be manageable for a while. When extended to women, it is an act of plain stupidity. If a man believes that both sexes (not gender), given an identical set of conditions, will choose the same and act according to logic and in a hierarchical manner, then he deserves the moral castration he receives courtesy of modernity.
Yes, I do believe he is a feminist.
Profoundly true. And wonderfully phrased. My only suggested tweak:
A feminist woman is an oxymoron.
Women who recognize that feminism is spiritual cancer make life worth living.
Nah, it has nothing to do with that, nothing whatsoever. The mistake was enfranchising people who do not own property, for only that really mitigates people’s desire to undermine property rights by voting themselves the confiscated wealth of others. It should not be an onerously large amount of property, indeed pretty much *any* freehold large enough to sleep on should do the trick.
This may have been workable in a society where the majority of the people own property, and only the bottom 5-10% comprised of the ne’er-do-wells don’t.
But in a highly stratified world where only the top 20-30% can afford to own property, it sounds like a recipe for violent insurrection.
The ability of the non-owners to vote themselves a portion of the owners’ wealth is mostly just a way to make that insurrection into a slower, more manageable process.
Not sure that I agree, bobby b. At least one source indicates that during the colonial era as much as 75% of white males owned property, but since women, blacks, Jews and Catholics could not vote the franchise was actually held by only 10-20% of the adult population. That seemed to work OK.
I’ve always found LotF suspect in its assumption of descent into savagery. It seems to be the extrapolation of children in one environment (privileged boys in public school) into a totally different one. However, the change in environment changes the game. The stakes are higher, big things become smaller, small things become bigger and the ability to prove oneself extends beyond simple bullying. The whole dynamic changes.
It’s an interesting question to ask why everyone should have an equal say in government. Certainly it hasn’t always been the case. Heinlein explores an alternative option in Starship Troopers. Asking this question is outside the Overton window and will get you funny looks but it’s worth asking. The answer may be just because it’s “fair” but is it really? And what does fair have to do with anything anyway? Does it really do what it sets out to achieve?
The answer would depend on what is government allowed or not allowed to do – which is the a far-more important question anyway.
Here’s my response, FWIW:
If you decree that I, a competent adult going about my life on my land, can have no say in the governance of my life and that land, while others can, I will kill you to stop that from happening. Crude, but that’s really what it comes down to.
What it achieves is keeping me from becoming a powerless and voiceless serf in my own land. Granted, one vote makes little difference, but a disenfranchisement aimed at me is likely to also affect people with whom I share some affinity, and thus disempowers an entire viewpoint. That’s not freedom.
Alisa, agreed.
Bobby b, that’s really just another way of putting “democracy is a proxy for war” which I have stated in the past. However, it’s far from being complete. Many people would be quite happy to live in serfdom (as has been proven in the past and is proven to varying degrees in modern times). But even given you and people like you (which I tentatively count myself as one), it is more likely that you would find yourself amongst the enfranchised in any remotely sane qualification requirement (such as landowner, taxpayer, minimum educational).
We already see many people self-disqualifying by simply not voting. Now, some proportion of that is people upset with the political system but there are many people who simply are happy to abdicate any participation in political direction.
bobby b, it’s far from a perfect analogy, but consider the recent rise in companies with dual classes of common stock, one of which possesses no (or reduced) voting rights. Personally, I would never buy such a stock, but clearly there is a market for them or they wouldn’t be proliferating (Snapchat, Facebook, etc.). And realistically, it might be a rational choice for some investors: specifically, those who simply want their quarterly dividend, or to participate in the company’s growth, but have no interest in bothering themselves about company affairs. (How many of us simply throw away the proxy form, or simply vote it in accordance with management’s recommendation?) One can make a similar argument that a significant number of people simply want to live their lives (and/or collect their welfare checks) without bothering themselves about politics or voting.
I’m not taking a position here on the merits of the argument. But Richard is correct: it is certainly a question worth exploring, if only because it stretches one’s mind and forces him to consider things from a radically different perspective.
There is no difference between boys and girls as it’s all a social construct.
(Meanwhile, back at the ranch…)
Girls need constant support and encouragement, female role models in tech and sciences and in popular fictions, and need to be recognized as special beings, made to feel special, but if you say boys need fathers and male teachers, (evidence regarding the effect of being a bastard is, dare I say “settled”), the leftists then pull out the long knives.
Leftism is a crypto-religion based on a near infinite number of contradictions, falsehoods and “irreality”.